In this Town, We Can Sail Without the Winds

It had been so long, so so long, and yet I still remember how we were, lying on grassy hills under summer skies with fireflies twinkling around us and the breeze rippling through our clothes and tangling up our hair. The rustling leaves and call of cicadas played in the background as we laughed and talked and fooled around.

You told me we would be timeless.

We had felt so right. You had felt so right, caressing and whispering and promising, saying you’d never leave, that we would last forever. There had been so much conviction, so much feeling, so much reverence and adoration and love as you said it. Each and every time, over and over again, and I couldn’t do anything but believe.

You told me we would be timeless.

I clung to the words like a lifeline, treated them as if they were unbreakable oaths sworn on the heavens. They were my everything, a promise that you would always be back, always always always. Each year, each summer, a promise. Your return was the one thing to look forward to, the one thing to make me get out of bed in the morning and live life for another day.

You were my everything.

If I were a boat in the oceans around, then you were the winds that filled my sails. You gave me a will and a purpose, made me better and brought out a side of me I never knew. Without you, I was simply nothing, simply just another person in another small town in the middle of nowhere. Without the wind, this boat couldn’t sail.

You broke your promise.

After everything that had happened, between you, between me, between us, you never came back. You found someone else, went and left without a glance or a word, and I was all alone. All alone and still in the middle of this vast, vast ocean wondering, “Did I really think the winds would stay?”

I thought you would.

But that, that was years ago, eons perhaps, and those days truly felt like another time. The timeless love I thought we had came to an end after all, but I could fix myself, did fix myself. I put the pieces back together, built a new me from the ashes. I became better and I became confident and I realized it hadn’t been you this whole time fixing me, but the idea of you. And now, years later, you’ve come back. You found out what it felt like to be broken, cast away in the dirt, and you came back, looking for arms to run into for comfort, for another fling so you can love and be loved. But I am not the same person you left so long ago, and now, I have only one thing to say to you.